Samsung has teamed with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and British Olympic gold medallist Victoria Pendleton to launch an application for Android, iPhone and Samsung Wave handsets that donates £1 to a host of charities every time you run, walk or cycle a mile.

The Samsung Hope Relay app is free to download and uses the GPS in a smartphone to register how far you have travelled, posting the figure on Facebook or another social network (if required). Samsung, as a worldwide partner of the London 2012 Olympics, is then committed to adding £1 to a pool of money that will be distributed among the London-based Kids Company, London 2012's international sports legacy programme, International Inspiration and an IOC-designated charity.

This, as Pocket-lint was told by UK managing director of Samsung, Andy Griffiths, could raise up to $1 million. "We're hoping to raise a million," he said.

Ambassador for the Samsung Hope Relay, Oliver told us that the initiative is a way of getting everybody around the UK involved in the Olympics. "It's really important to get people to take part in the Olympic Games in some way," Oliver said.

The application allows you to create an avatar of yourself - using a photo of your face stuck on top of a runner's body. This figure will then appear in any social networking communications and could even, if you opt in, appear on the side of the Olympic Torch Relay coach or on Samsung advertising billboards.

You can also form a team of runners who can gee each other on, and can record messages of encouragement. There are also portals in the application to find out more about Samsung's other initiatives for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

There are some rules to using the app. For starters, you can't go more than 25 miles per hour or the mile will not count, so don't try using it on a car journey. Also, there is a limit to how many miles you can register per run - 26, according to Griffiths.

The Samsung Hope Relay application is available on Google Play (for Android) and Samsung Apps (for the Wave, Wave II and Wave 3) now. It will be available on iOS later today. You have until 12 August to register your miles. It will be released on a wider, more global scale - 18 countries in total - in the coming weeks.

Will you be helping to raise money through the Hope Relay app? Let us know in the comments below...

Our senior ed of news and features has been a tech and games journalist for more than 27 years, and has been with Pocket-lint for over five. Rik has edited a number of videogame magazines in the past, was deputy editor of Home Cinema Choice, and his TV career included stints as co-presenter of Channel 4's Gamesmaster and Sky One’s Games World.